Gall Bladder Cancer

Gallbladder is used to store bile required for digestion in stomach, when food is being broken down in small intestine small amounts of bile enters the small intestine in small quantities and mixes with the food. Gallbladder cancer is the rarest form of cancer and does not become obvious till the time it has grown, some times this cancer has even traveled to other parts till the time the cancer is discovered.

Gallbladder cancer is rare; therefore, the symptoms are often mixed up with some other disease. The symptoms of gall bladder cancer are weakness, jaundice, loss of appetite, burping, weight loss, vomiting, infection, etc. The cancer spreads to the organs nearest to it, being duodenum, stomach, liver, pancreas, etc. Most of the gall bladder cancers are adenocarcinomas, there is a very small percentage which cause the cancer through squamous cell carcinomas.

Biopsy of the gall bladder cancer requires to be done in order to ascertain whether the cancer is malignant of benign, this biopsy can be done after surgery since the gall bladder is placed at a very delicate place in human body.

If cancer is spread considerably there are chances that the patient will die within one year of cholecystectomy, or removal of gall bladder, in case the cancer has spread only partially, only part removal is possible, and the patient has a chance to live a longer life. Other two types of treatments used along with surgery sometimes are radiation therapy and chemotherapy, to see to it that the cancer does not spread elsewhere in the body.

Gall bladder cancer can spread to biliary tract or mouth of small intestine. This cancer if affects the bile duct is also known as bile duct cancer. There are no known causes for gallbladder cancer, this cancer affects women more than men, the cancer also affects people between the ages of 50-60. Obesity is one of the causes for gallbladder cancer. Alcohol again is one of the factors which might contribute towards this cancer.

Gallbladder cancer can be as dangerous as any other cancer if goes undetected for a long time. This cancer is increasing in its instances because of increasing obesity. Gallbladder cancer can metastasize to other parts of stomach faster than any other parts of the body. Finding about this cancer in time might help reduce risk of deaths from this cancer effectively. This cancer is rare because of the nature of gall bladder only to store bile and not any other external elements.